


Innamorato

by twobirdsonesong



Series: Prufrock Verse [9]
Category: CrissColfer - Fandom, Glee RPF
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, Future Fic, M/M, Post Glee, Prufrock verse, RPF, Sexual Content, Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-11
Updated: 2012-12-11
Packaged: 2017-11-20 21:56:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/590067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twobirdsonesong/pseuds/twobirdsonesong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are many places in the world to visit, when there’s time, and home is, of course, where the heart is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Innamorato

**Author's Note:**

> The second of the future fics set in the Prufrock Verse.

It’s a good eight months before they get to disappear again.  Eight months before they can slip free of the weighty, rusting chains of careers and obligations and slide back into late mornings with the sun warming the sheets and languid afternoons with the sound of Darren’s guitar easing into the dusty corners of an apartment.  Chris doesn’t know where Darren keeps finding these places – these perfect little rentals that feel more like  _home_  after two days than his own house sometimes feels. 

Eight months is the length of Darren’s latest contracted run on Broadway.  The show is a success, of course it is, and Darren’s Tony nomination just proves it.  It proves it to himself and to everyone else – to those who still see him as just that kid from a TV show.  Chris doesn’t know if he’ll win – the competition is always insane and he thinks that there may be a little bias against Darren as the ‘new kid’ who maybe didn’t quite earn the job he landed.  But a win doesn’t matter; a statue on a mantle doesn’t mean much.  It’s not what’s important.  What matters is the transition.  What matters is the recognition that Darren succeeded, and that now he has an even greater chance for  _more_.

But his schedule was hectic, disruptive.  Eight shows a week, every week, for eight months meant no chance at all for even a weekend getaway.  Boston was close, but it wasn’t close enough.  Money couldn’t buy time and nowhere was close enough when there was another show just on the other side of dawn.

The schedule meant Darren in an overpriced apartment in New York for most of a year while Chris stayed in Los Angeles and tried not to care about the significance of three thousand miles.  He buried himself in his own projects: another book and a dark, haunting movie script that came out an aching need to fill the sudden, disconcerting, body-shaped space in his life.  He only dared to take half-empty red eye flights across the country when he could land in the wee hours of the morning and sneak in through the doors of a nondescript building before anyone could spot him.  It meant more nights alone than he cared to think about with the phone on the cool, empty pillow next to his and the wide stretch of a bed grown used to company. 

But when it’s over, when the curtain is drawn on Darren one last time and the theatre empties of the last crowds, Chris pulls their suitcases out of the closet and sets them, open and waiting, on the bed.

_(Senza di te la mia vita non ha senso.)_

***

Bologna isn’t the isolated, secluded safe haven that Bonifacio was.  It’s a bustling city of lifelong residents and fervent artists, excited tourists and harried students.  There are adorable cafés packed full, morning until night, and crowded farmers’ markets that send the aroma of fresh cheese and expensive meats curling along the breeze.  There are cramped little shops run by grandmothers who hardly speak a word of English and more theatres than they’ll ever be able to go to in a too-short month.

Darren’s Italian gets them by with minimal embarrassment; Chris’ mangled attempts earn them giggles and kind looks from understanding locals.  Chris blushes and Darren discretely touches his hip every time he attempts to greet someone with the proper conjugation.  He’s never been comfortable with foreign languages because he hates getting it wrong, but he tries, and it’s worth it when Darren beams at him, bright and adoring, every time he gets his tongue to wrap around the vowels with some semblance of fluidity.  

And Darren’s whispered  _voglio fare l’amore con te_  in his ear at night, when they’re tangled close and panting and Darren’s hands are almost too warm on him, is enough to make Chris keep trying to get it right.

The privacy and seclusion of a deserted beach has been replaced with a spectacular sort of anonymity that comes from being regarded as just being another couple of Americans in a popular Italian town for an extended vacation.  It’s some kind of wonderful, to be just another face in the crowd, to walk down the street and window-shop without worry or fear or doubt.  Chris is glad they came here and not another beach, even if it means Darren can’t spend the month naked and frolicking through the surf and Chris can’t enjoy licking the salt water from the hollows of his collarbone.  Darren still grows his hair and his beard out, and given the amount of cheese and wine he’s consuming, Chris is pretty sure he’s trying to grow his belly out too.

The fiction of it, of who they are, is only broken when an occasional tourist recognizes one or both of them.  It’s heart stopping – that moment when someone’s eyes connect across the cobbled street and the  _it’s you_ passes so clearly across their face.  Chris feels the sweat break out across his forehead and he wonders if this is it, if this is the moment when the storybook closes and the fairytale ends. 

But it never is.

After a girl unexpectedly took Darren’s picture while he was picking through the selection of sun-ripened tomatoes at a tiny table at a farmer’s market, Chris pulled the  _possible emergency card_  and got his laptop out of the closet to check if the photo had made its way onto the Internet.  It hadn’t.  He’d sighed, relief thrumming hot and cold through him, and shoved the computer away before he could be tempted to start checking emails.  Darren had run his hand through Chris’ hair, fingers tangling in the thick strands, and he’d tilted Chris’ head back to place a soft, lingering kiss on his mouth.

He’d tasted sharply of garlic and wine and apology.

That particular instance wouldn’t have been the train wreck that it could have been if Chris had been in the picture too.  The camera would have caught the way Darren’s fingers were curled around the leather cuff on Chris’ wrist as he tugged him closer to inspect a particularly ripe bunch of tomatoes.  But it still would have been a problem, what with Darren sporting a fairly obvious mark on his exposed collarbone in the shape of Chris’ mouth.

It’s too close for Chris’ comfort, but it doesn’t ruin anything.  It doesn’t take away from how needed this trip is, for the both of them.  It doesn’t detract from late nights roaming the emptied sidewalks, when Darren can catch a hold of Chris’ hand and not let go.  A random fan on the streets of Bologna doesn’t change the lazy afternoons sharing space in the kitchen, trying out yet another new recipe Darren managed to weasel from the chef of their favorite little restaurant.  It doesn’t ruin how the sun breaking over the horizon and warming the sheets wakes Chris slowly.  The drag of Darren’s fingertips against his inner thighs and the heat of his breath against Chris’ throat rouse the rest of him.

After three weeks of tiny cups of dark, rich espresso and delectable pastries and wine so pure he can taste the grapes and dirt and sunlight, Chris almost forgets that he too is a tourist.  There’s something about being away, about being in a different country and yet sharing it with someone so utterly familiar that nothing can seem foreign.  Chris loves it.

And he thinks going back, going  _home_ , is just going to get harder and harder.

_(Sei tutto per me. Sei il mio universo.)_

***

Darren is immediately popular among the locals, once they realize he and Chris will be in town for more than a week and they aren’t the kind of stereotypically loud and obnoxious Americans who erroneously give other tourists a bad reputation.  It’s his easy laugh, bright eyes, and eagerness to play music for naught but tips and a free dinner that endears him to everyone they come across.

Chris sits in the back of the restaurant, at a little table set for two with a bottle of wine opened to breathe and a plate of bruschetta to nibble on while Darren plays.  Sometimes Darren’s set is fifteen minutes and just a few standards; sometimes it’s more than an hour and he pulls songs from his seemingly endless catalogue.  The longtime residents don’t seem to care what he plays – whether it’s a stripped down version of a pop song (Chris doesn’t think he’ll ever tire of  _Teenage Dream_ , no matter how many times he hears it) or an old Italian classic that Chris didn’t even know Darren knew.  Every night he plays is a little different from the night before.

_(Tu sei il sole del mio giorno.)_

Sometimes Chris brings a book with him – a paperback with a broken spine he picked up at the little used bookshop down the way – and sometimes he brings his notebook to write and sketch out his ideas.  But often he just sits back and listens and watches.

When Darren plays, his eyes close and his soul opens.  Chris has seen Darren in innumerable situations – doubled over laughing as helpless tears stream down his face at something Joey said; flushed to his navel and moaning brokenly as Chris slides inside; frowning at a script that isn’t quite what he wants for a character he owes everything to but will do anyway.  But nothing prepared Chris for the way Darren looks when he’s lost in music.

When he plays, Chris sees the Darren he didn’t know when he was younger.  He wishes he’d met Darren sooner, when he needed someone to tell him it would be ok, and he wonders what could have been different if he had.  When Darren is perched on a stool with dim lighting casting shadows across his face, Chris sees the Darren he couldn’t have known when he was 19 and stuck in a town he didn’t like and that didn’t love him in return.  He sees the kid who played Disney covers on a battered acoustic guitar in his bedroom and posted them to the Internet, just on a hope that something would ever come of it.  Darren is older now, his hair isn’t as long (though not by Darren’s choice) and there are a few more lines in the crinkle of his smile.

Chris even found a grey hair hidden among the twists of black.  Darren had just laughed and shrugged: “At least it’s not in my pubes,” he’d said and Chris had to agree with that.

But when Darren is on stage with a guitar or a piano and nothing else but the music, Chris sees the kid who tried out for a part on a TV show with nothing but a wing and a prayer.  Chris sees  _Darren_  and no one else.

And when Darren is done with his set, when the scattered applause dies and the din of a dozen conversations takes over, Darren picks his way through the tables and joins Chris.  He edges his chair close to Chris’ and hooks his foot around Chris’ under the table – easy and natural.  Then, and only then, does Chris order them dinner.  He spent enough nights over the last eight months eating alone, of getting enough take-out for two even though he knew he’d only have to pack it up for leftovers – he’ll be damned if he’s going to do it now.

_(Ti ho chiuso nel mio cuore.)_

“Do you have to sing that song every time?” Chris asks, and they both know what song he’s  _not_  talking about.

“What? They love it!” Darren pours them both wine and the ring on his finger clinks brightly against the bottle.

“You mean you love it.  They just endure your obsession.”  Truth be told, Chris can listen to Darren sing  _Tu Vuo Fa L’Americano_  almost as often as he can  _Teenage Dream_ , but Darren doesn’t need to know that. 

“That’s not even remotely true.”  Darren snags the last piece of bruschetta off the plate and pops it whole into his mouth.  His eyes glow a warm golden-honey in the candlelight as he stares at Chris while he chews obnoxiously loudly.  Chris rolls his eyes and reaches over to brush a few crumbs from Darren’s beard.

“Savage,” Chris mutters, fondly, and he sucks in a breath when Darren snags his wrist and presses a quick kiss to his pulse point.

“I’m gonna play some Mumford and Sons next time,” Darren says.  His foot rubs against the back of Chris’ calf and Chris shifts closer so they don’t have to raise their voices to be heard over the other restaurant-goers.  His shoulder brushes against Darren’s and he can just smell the lingering traces of Darren’s shampoo, light and sweet amidst the heavy scents of tomato and basil and garlic.

“Are you now?  And did you bring a banjo with you?  I don’t recall packing one.”

“No, but Signore Bianchi has a mandolin he’s going to let me borrow.”

Chris isn’t even the least bit surprised that Darren managed to wrangle a mandolin from their landlord.  Darren’s always had a sort of gift for getting whatever it is he wants.  “Of course.”

“You’re gonna fucking love it.”

“I always love it,” Chris says, voice pitched soft and private, and Darren’s eyes go wide and dark.  The candlelight reflects in his eyes and Chris always has to look away.

Darren opens his mouth to say something, to respond to what Chris so subtly, so carefully laid out between them, but the waiter comes by with their dishes.  Chris watches the working of Darren’s throat as he swallows down whatever it was that was sitting charged on his tongue.

There will be another time.

_(Quando chiudo gli occhi vedo solo te.)_

***

“Really, Colfer?”

Chris looks up from his notebook as Darren comes bouncing into the apartment with a broad grin already on his face.  His hair is falling across his forehead and he’s got his guitar case in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other.  Chris can’t stop the smile that curves his lips at the sight of him.  Darren is sunshine and easy laughter and everything good in the world that Chris was lacking for so very long, and he didn’t even know it.

“What?”

“Did you even move at all today?” Darren looks pointedly at the empty coffee cups and crumb-dusted plates that are scattered around Chris’ feet.

Chris just rolls his eyes and shrugs.  The rented apartment has a strange layout, as though it was carved up and patched together from pieces of other rooms, and there’s a little nook with a big bay window that’s fairly useless for much at all.  But on the fourth day of their trip, when they’d finally dragged themselves from the tall, canopied bed for more than a couple of hours, Chris pulled one of the big, overstuffed chairs from the living room into the nook and angled it so it faced the window.  Below are the streets of Bologna and in the distance, past the red tiled roofs, are vast, green vineyards.

It’s his third favorite place in the apartment, aside from the unfairly comfortable bed and its soft sheets (despite the diaphanous curtains that make him chuckle every time he sees them) and the sharp cut of Darren’s hips.  Chris likes to take his notes and his coffee and write out the next chapters of his upcoming book by hand while the sunlight glows warm and bright across the white pages.

“Yes, I did,” Chris protests with a grin, and he nudges at one of the three empty cups sitting underfoot.  There’s a fourth cup, still half-full of dark, rich coffee, sitting precariously on the windowsill.  “I got up and ate the rest of that cheese you bought last week and I didn’t save any at all for you.  Not a crumb.”  That’s not true; Chris saved Darren a bite, but he’s not going to tell him that until dinner.  He has to have something he can hold over Darren.

“Sounds incredibly taxing.  How will you ever recover from such exertion?”  Darren props his guitar case up against the wall and sets the bottle of wine down on the kitchen island, next to the dozen other bottles.

Darren plays in cafés and restaurants for tips and little more, but Pietro, the owner of the little restaurant just a few blocks away, has taken a liking to Darren and gives him a bottle of house wine every night that Darren plays there.  There’s no way they’re going to be able to finish off the wine before they leave, but Chris has no qualms about buying another suitcase to take their growing collection home in.

“Good news,” Darren says.

“Do tell.”  Chris closes his notebook and uncrosses his legs.  The chair is comfortable, but it’s not quite meant for a grown man to spend an entire day in. 

“I think I made enough cash today to buy you more of that cheese.”  Darren digs into his pocket and pulls out a worn leather bag that looks like something a medieval peasant in a B-list movie would carry around.

Darren found it at a little antique shop their first night in Bologna, when they were too tired from the flight to do much more than nap and then roam the narrow pedestrian streets.  The aged, stooped man who ran the shop eyed them a little suspiciously – the pale young man who clearly wasn’t from around there and his tanned and already scruffy counterpart – until Darren had called out to the man. 

“Buon giorno, Signore!”  Darren had said and he’d lifted his hand in greeting.  “Come sta?”  The shopkeeper’s eyes had widened at Darren’s easy pronunciation – clearly not native, but not new to the language at all.

“Sto bene, grazie, e Lei?”  The man had replied and his expression had softened into something much more welcoming.

“Va tutto bene.”

Chris had offered his own half-mumbled greeting, tongue tripping over the vowels, before Darren had guided him towards the table of items that had caught his eye from the sidewalk.  The boyish grin that curved his mouth when he spotted the little bag nestled in amongst the rest of the bric-à-brac was too lovely for Chris to tell him no, no he can’t carry a purse around like he’s some sort of medieval European lord. 

The bag clinks heavily when Darren tosses it down onto the counter next to the wine and Chris knows it’s laden with the Euros that patrons tossed into Darren’s open guitar case throughout the evening.  It’s not often that Chris doesn’t go to see Darren play, but that evening he’d had too much roaming through his head that he’d needed to get down on paper before it slipped from his mind. 

“If you keep playing that song, you’re going to get sick of it,” Chris teases.

“Unlikely.  And besides,” Darren cocks an eyebrow and begins to cross the room towards Chris.  Chris feels something tighten in his belly at the dark, almost predatory glimmer in Darren’s eyes and a shiver races up his spine.  “My pronunciation is getting so much better.” 

“Don’t you dare…” Chris sits up straighter in the chair and his notebook falls to the floor with a dull  _thump_.

“Puorte ‘e cazune cu nu stemma arreto…” Darren’s voice is honey and wine and every unsaid promise in the world.  He steps between Chris’ parted knees and the scrape of his jeans against Chris’ legs sends a shudder through Chris’ suddenly expectant body.

“Darren, stop.”  Chris’ heart stutters a faster beat at the smooth slide of the words across Darren’s capable tongue.  Darren knows, that fucker  _knows_ , what it does to Chris to hear him speak another language.

“Na cuppulella cu ‘a visiera aizata…”

“I’m serious.”

“Passa scampanianno pe’ Tuleto…” Darren bends his knees and slides onto Chris’ lap, settling his weight down on Chris’ thighs, groin pressed intimately, familiarly close.  The chair groans a warning, but they’ve tested its stability before. 

“Get off of me.” Chris’ hands slide up Daren’s firm thighs to grip tightly at his hips.  Darren’s arms wind around his shoulders and his fingers dig through Chris’ hair.  His eyes have gone whiskey-warm and are glittering bright in fading sunlight.  The heat builds fast and aching.

“Comm’a nuguappo, pe’ se fa’ guarda.’”

Chris finally shuts him up with a sudden, fierce kiss and Darren grins happily against his lips as his tongue slides in deep. 

_(Il mio cuore è solo tuo.)_

***

It’s well past  _too late_  in the evening, creeping up on  _too early_  in the morning, and hours since they tumbled into bed when Chris feels Darren shift slowly in the bed.  The sheets are tangled down around their feet and the air is just cool enough with the breeze gliding through the open window that Chris shivers a little.  He wants to sleep, wants to inch across the mattress and curl into Darren’s arms, but sometimes the buzzing, just under his skin, left behind by Darren’s hands and lips and tongue keeps him just on the edge of awareness.

“You’re awake,” Darren mumbles, low and thick with sleep, and Chris reaches out across the bed to find the warmth of Darren’s skin. 

“Am not.”

“Why are you awake?” 

Chris sighs and turns onto his side.  Darren is facing him, one arm stretched out across the bed, seeking touch, but his eyes are still closed.  Chris rests his palm against Darren’s upturned one and Darren’s fingers close around his as a tiny smile twitches the corners of his lips.

The room is dark and the pale light of the nearly full moon casts Darren in stark chiaroscuro.  The thick lashes against his cheeks.  The shadow of his hips.  The hollow of his throat.  He is beautiful, strikingly so, and Chris thinks maybe he should say it to him more often than he does.  He thinks maybe Darren should hear it in words and not just in the reverent slide of Chris’ fingertips against his skin.

But they’re hard words to say,  _you are beautiful_ , when they’re not quite enough to mean what they should.  Chris thinks maybe he could spend his entire life just trying to figure out the right combination of words to tell Darren  _everything_.

“Just…thinking.”  There’s no use in trying to explain just what he’s thinking in that moment; he doesn’t really know himself.  But there are snippets of thoughts looping endlessly through his brain:  _home_ ;  _you_ ;  _forever_.

“Let’s make a pact.”  Darren says and he finally opens his eyes.  They’re almost colorless in the wash of moonlight, but the depth of them is still there and it still takes Chris’ breath away.

“What?  Are you thirteen?” Chris raises an eyebrow, letting a slow grin curve his mouth, and expects Darren to make a ‘and going on thirty’ crack, but Darren doesn’t.  Darren just blinks, eyelashes fluttering so prettily, and his grip on Chris’ hand tightens.

“No, I’m serious.”  Darren rolls onto his stomach and Chris is momentarily distracted by the flex of his muscles and the sensuous curve of his ass and the way the moonlight smoothes across his skin and pools in the dip of his spine.

“Let’s make a pact to do this.”  Darren taps his fingers against the mattress in the space between their bodies.  “To make time for this.  Whenever we can.”  There is a peculiar intensity in his eyes, a gravity that makes Chris’ pulse race.  Darren is telling him something; he just needs to listen.  “Just you and me.”

Chris swallows thickly; suddenly unable to take a breath, and his heart feels so tight in his chest it might burst.  He gets it, like a lightning strike across the sky, what Darren is really saying. 

This is Darren making a promise.  This is Darren making a vow.

Chris slides across the bed then, unable to stand the distance any longer.   He knocks a pillow to the floor in his haste to get closer and Darren rolls onto his back as Chris fits himself against his body.  Darren inhales sharply and his arms curl around Chris, holding him tight.  His hips slot, close and intimate, and Chris shudders at the slide of smooth skin and scratch of hair.

“Si,” Chris whispers into the solid curve of Darren’s chest.  The scent of his skin is achingly familiar – soothing and exhilarating all at once.  “ _Si_.”  He presses a kiss to the heated skin beneath his lips and swears he can feel Darren’s heart beating.

_(Sei il grande amore della mia vita.)_


End file.
